Anti-social media

Winter is closing. The primary conference season, here in India, is almost over by now. Conferences are for academic socialisation. You make new contacts, refresh the old ones, exchange email IDs, occasionally discuss science, and obviously do lots of bitching on lack  of research grants, bureaucratic red-tapes, politics of award committees etc. (For those lesser morals, not in academics, I suggest to read Small World: An Academic Romance by David Lodge to get an idea). Whatever it is, conferences in India are lively. They serve good foods and are crowded  and noisy to make you feel living.

Another thing that make you feel living and kicking is social media, from Facebook to Tweeter. These are also social activities, just virtual. Social media is slowly becoming part of academics. Social media can be used to champion popular science, to share ideas and information with fellow scientists. It is an excellent medium to debate over science policies. (If not impressed with my words, you may read this post to know why a scientist should use social media). 

Institutions, across the globe, are now using Tweeter and Facebook to serve their news to a larger audience, including media. Funding agencies also do so. Social media is often used to promote conferences and meetings. Individual researchers post their works. Services like ResearchGate and others are trying to build social networks exclusively for scientists. They are promoting social media to discuss science with all its nuts and bolts. Even then, most of the scientists are still not using these online tools for academics. 

Situation is far grimmer in India. The present government is promoting use of social media to interact with its citizens. But unfortunately, only a handful of academic and research institutes use social media to engage with the public and media. Individual scientists rarely use social media to interact with their peers. Strangely, many young scientists regularly use social media like Facebook, to spam 'cute'  pics of their puppies or to vent opinion on terrorism; but rarely to share their research and science in general. Drop a 140 worded review in tweeter on an exciting paper that you read just now or post a recent popular science article on Facebook. Don't expect a buzz from your colleagues and peers. Rather expect a silence.

Facing some technical trouble in experiment? Post it to ResearchGate. Don't expect an answer from your Indian colleagues. Most of the answers would be from some one abroad. Many of your Indian peers and colleagues are there in ReseachGate and regularly update their publication profiles. But they will rarely engage in peer- discussions and debates there.

It is weird. Science is a social endeavor. Discussions, debates and sharing of information, over a coffee or in the Web, helps one to get enriched. I wonder why then my "Argumentative Indian" colleagues and peers are so silent on the Web. One of my cynic old colleague does have an answer for me though: "your Tweets are not counted at the time of promotion".

Invisible co-passengers in your life

You think it's your body. You touch it, see it,  feel it and appreciate it. Looking at the anatomical pictures of  internal parts, you feel amazed about the complexity of your body. But is everything in your body yours? Count the cells. You will realise that majority of the cells, you carry, are not yours. Those are diverse microorganisms, mostly bacteria. According to a rough estimate, a person, having 40 lakh crore cells, caries 400 lakh crore microbes. In other words, we are ten percent human. Almost three percent of our weight comes from these tiny creatures. They are present on our skin, in cavities, even in internal organs like lung and gut. The womb that was once considered to be a sterile zone, also harbours microorganisms. All this microorganisms, in our body, as a whole constitute human microbiome. A hidden world within us.

It has long been known that our gut have bacteria that help us in various ways, from providing micronutrients like vitamins to chasing out bad microbes. They are commonly called commensals. Many of these bacteria are different types of lactobacillus, similar to the one that we use to make curd. In fact, consumption of curd is an way to supplement the existing microbes within your gut. Prolonged use of antibiotics destroys microbes in the gut, even the helpful ones. That's why patients are advised to consume probiotics as supplement. Probiotics are live microorganisms that are helpful for our health. 

Our microbiome is like a cocktail. It’s  difficult to identify and study individual microbes in it. Now, technologies exist to identify large number of different microorganisms in a mixture, in short time, using their genetic fingerprints. Such technologies have invigorated research in this field. There is also a philosophical shift among biologists. The time of over-emphasis on genes of an individual is over. Now biologists realise that we need to take the environment  into consideration to understand complexities of human physiology and diseases. The Microbiome is our immediate environment. The way we manipulate the nature around us, these microorganisms also manipulate us. And we need to understand their actions on us to maintain our health.

Take the problem of obesity. Its becoming an epidemic, even in our country. Your physician, friendly experts and the advertisements of fitness clinics must have now convinced you that our food habit and lifestyle are making us obese. Thats correct, to a large extent. But those microbes in your gut also play a role in this. Many microbes in our gut help in harvesting energy from food and affect metabolism. Therefore, variation in the microbial ecology of our gut can affect our body weight. Studies have shown that the microbiome of obese individuals is different from that of lean. In fact, one study has even shown that response to a weight-loss program has relation to individuals gut microbes. Animal studies have proved that by manipulating gut microbiome we may control obesity. One way to achieve that is to transplant a right cocktail of microorganisms in our gut. Even selective foods or antibiotics can be used to manipulate the microbial ecology. However, such works are still experimental and you have to wait some more time to add a cocktail of microbes in your fiber-rich weight-loss diet.  

But experiments are not limited to obesity. Transplantation of microbes is helping in fight against a dreaded infection. Clostridium difficile is a bacteria that causes severe diarrhea, particularly in patients using antibiotics. In many cases treatment with antibiotics does not help. Loss of friendly microbes in the gut aggravate this. Infusion, made out of stool from a healthy donor, given like an enema helps in reconstructing the lost microbial world in the gut and that contains this drug-resistant disease. Such stool transplantation has been experimentally used even in other diseases like irritable bowel syndrome.  Everyday, scientists are discovering connections between microbiome and other diverse diseases like asthma in children, autism, arthritis and even cardiovascular diseases. In fact many people believe that improved sanitation in the West is reducing childhood exposure to microorganisms, tweaking their microbiome and making them more susceptible to various diseases.

Our journey with microorganisms starts in the mother’s womb. The process of birth also adds, as microbes present in the vagina get transfered.  In fact, microbiome of children born by cesarean delivery differs from those born by normal way. After the birth, a child's microbiome is shaped by the microbes present in mothers milk. Subsequently, it keeps changing with our food habits, environment, use of antibiotics, interactions with people and pets. The hidden world within us is dynamic and keeps interacting with us. Just like the ecosystem outside, our technology and lifestyle also affects the microbial ecology within.  The biology of this ecosystem is little known. For long we have been self-centered and have written our own travelogues. Now we are learning to recognize and appreciate these invisible co-passengers of our life. Surely you will love them as much you love the mole on your cheek.